Are Technologies Worthless? Environmentalist Engineers in Quest of Sustainable Compromises

Résumé :

Since the mid-2010s, engineers in France have become increasingly involved in environmental activism. This commitment is giving rise to an appropriation of environmental causes, including climate change, the degradation of biodiversity and the risks engendered by pollution, and giving rise to critical moments, i.e., situations of doubt with regard to lived reality. In particular, the discursive expression of these environmentalist engineers is sharply critical of technological objects accused of contributing to ecological catastrophe, for example through their greenhouse gas emissions and the destruction of ecosystems linked to the extraction of the natural resources needed for their production. These environmentalist engineers therefore question the values generally attributed to technologies—efficiency, reliability, utility—by the professional engineering community. They thus engage in the elaboration of compromises, i.e., a work of combination between several spaces of justification, in order to identify criteria according to which technological objects could be granted new positive values. A compromise emerges between industrial and ecological justifications, valuing technologies that limit their impact on the environment. Based on low-tech theories, another compromise adds a democratic criterion to the environmental protection criterion, valuing technological objects that are accessible to the greatest number of individuals. Finally, environmentalist engineers refuse to compromise with market values deemed incompatible with environmental protection.